


you will have all the respect you are due

by suitablyskippy



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Song of Ice and Fire, Crack Treated (Moderately) Seriously, Gen, House Targaryen, Pastiche, Royalty in (Well-Deserved) Exile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 18:49:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8113498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: In truth, he had no plans. Showing mercy had seemed to Naruto like a strategy so simple that it needed no great thought; he had not dwelled long on the details. “A king is strongest when he has the love of his people,” he said.“A queen is strongest when she has the fear and sworn obedience of her people,” said Karin. “And a sister is best pleased when she has the same of her brother. You will not do this again, Naruto. You will not leave Jiraiya’s grounds until I see you wed. Do you want to wake the nine-tails, or will you hold your tongue?”(In exile beyond the Narrow Sea, the last two survivors of a once-legendary house famed for its association with a particular sort of raging, demonic mythical beast are preparing to retake their rightful throne. Really, it’s business as usual for Westeros.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO [LAURA](http://www.basedtaka.tumblr.com/)!!!!!! 1. a wonderful friend, 2. a wonderful partner-in-crime, 3. extremely responsible for discovering the incredible crossover potential of the Uzumaki/House Targaryen, which has been bringing joy into my life for months by this point ♥♥♥

 

“Do you want to wake the nine-tails?”

He didn’t. He never did. That rarely had any bearing on whether or not it would be woken, though. 

“You test my patience, brother. I spoke to you. Did you not hear?” His sister went barefoot in their private chambers, but the bench beneath the window still splintered when she kicked it. “I shall ask you once and only once again. Do you _want_ to wake the nine-tails?”

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t – I don’t.” Over the years Naruto had tested her patience often enough to realise that she lacked patience entirely. His sister could be patient no more than he could be cruel; but sometimes, if he was sweet enough, her blood could be cooled. From his nest of cushions on the floor, he reached up his palm to her. “Sweet sister, I only meant—”

Her skin of wine hit the wall above his head. She had taken it from the kitchens hours before and nursed it sullenly ever since; the red was warm, from the heat of the evening, and it soaked him to the skin. Wine dripped from his hair into his eyes. He did not wipe them; he did not dare. He hardly dared to flinch. 

“Do _not_ presume to raise your hand to me,” spat Karin, and left Naruto alone with the slam of a door and the sticky warmth of wine drying, slowly, against his skin. 

 

+++

 

“It was a sour grape,” Karin told him later, “as worthless in quality as all else this miserable city has to offer us. So you are fortunate, sweet brother; you caused me to lose nothing of value. We shall have wines of the finest vintage when I have my crown.” 

The wine had stained Naruto’s tunic a red so deep it was near to black. Once his clothes were sent for washing, the servants of the manse would be like to imagine that a sudden shower of blood had caught him in its midst; but he had not yet changed, nor had he washed. His sister’s hand passed across his hair, and obediently he moved aside on his nest of cushions that she might seat herself beside him. 

Her hand found first his knee, then his cheek. She turned his face to hers. “But you know what you did wrong, don’t you? You roused my blood; and there is fire in my blood, sweet brother.” 

“In our blood,” said Naruto. He did not look away as she studied him, turning his face this way and that as she held it. “The blood of the nine-tails.”

“Just so,” agreed Karin. A frown was always there between her brows, but it deepened as her thumb found the marks across his cheeks. She stroked back and forth, and he held still. “I mislike these, brother,” she said at last. “You should expect that your new husband will mislike them too.”

It was not the first time Naruto had heard such words from her. In one of his oldest memories he lay in the shade of some long-ago garden’s lemon tree, exhausted and contented from his play; the air was sweet with flowers, and his head and shoulders rested in the comfort of his sister’s lap. “The first Uzumaki who was not born blessed by beauty,” Karin had pronounced, as she studied him upside-down. “You truly are a miracle, brother.” 

Naruto still remembered the way her words had punctured him; and clear as ice he remembered how he had felt as though all the joy in him poured out through that wound. But in the years since he had heard such words from her so often that they no longer hurt, and the Karin whose hand lay upon him now was his sweet sister Karin, as gentle as she knew how to be – for so long as the nine-tails in her slept. 

“Jiraiya says it is the mark of the Uzumaki,” said Naruto. “He says our lady mother Queen Kushina bore markings of a kind with mine, and it showed how strong the nine-tails was within her.”

His sister’s expression grew sour. She bore no love for the jolly, red-cheeked merchant who had kept them fed and housed and clothed for the last year, though that was not unusual: Karin bore no love for anyone but Naruto himself, and even that she often gave him cause to doubt. “Jiraiya is an old done man, and a drunkard to boot. What does some Pentoshi brothel-keep know of the blood of the Uzumaki?”

“He tells stories,” Naruto said. “He’s travelled all over the Sunset Kingdoms, and he tells me of every place he’s been to in our realms, sister. He tells me tales of Whirlpool before the Doom, and of our House all the way back until the time of Queen Mito, First of her Name. And he says he saw the nine-tails, once. He says he was there at the Battle of the Rustling Leaves, when the uprising of House Uchiha was crushed in flame, and he saw—” 

Her grip on his face tightened; her thumb pressed hard against his cheek. “He fills your head with nonsense,” Karin said. “These markings show nothing other than that I have been cheated of the price an unblemished little brother would have brought me. Do you hear?” 

When he gave his assent, she released him. Karin liked to talk of the lands which would be hers once she sat upon her throne, but Jiraiya was a better storyteller by far; and many and more were the hours Naruto had spent listening in wide-eyed wonder as the merchant spun his vibrant tales of the lands beyond the Narrow Sea – the lands which were Karin’s by right, and which would be Naruto’s too, once they were wed in the ancient Uzumaki manner, brother to sister. 

His sister rose to her feet, seemingly content. “Still, we fetched a pretty purse for you, markings or no. Wash yourself before dinner, brother. You stink of wine.”

 

+++

 

Since his earliest childhood, Naruto had dreamed of the nine-tails almost every night. It was an inferno when he saw it, a monstrous golden fox with fur of raging flame; it was fearsome, but he did not fear it. The nine-tails in Karin was fearsome when he woke it, and that he did fear; but the nine-tails in his dreams did not hurt him, and in the curious way of dreams he knew it never would. It rarely spoke to him, either, and when it did it never scolded him, or criticised him, or raised its voice to him or spoke sharply. It would say his name, and it would tell him it was waiting; and if Naruto ever tried to ask where it waited, and for whom it waited, and for how long it would be waiting, the nine-tails gave him no reply but a middle finger insolently upraised. 

Karin did not share these demon dreams. In the past Naruto had often told her of them, and she had liked to listen. As they grew older, though, Naruto noticed that more and more his tales would seem to inflame her, and the fiery wrath of their blood would be roused within her when he spoke of them. And so he learned to keep the stories of his nine-tails hidden, in hope that the nine-tails which slept within his sister might hide itself in turn. 

It never did, but nevertheless the hope remained. No matter what came to pass, Naruto’s hope remained. 

 

+++

 

In Pentos they lived at Jiraiya’s hospitality, and his hospitality was endless. Naruto would lose whole days to adventure within the high walls of the manse, wandering from the long halls to the gardens to the richly tapestried chambers in which their host entertained his innumerable guests of an evening; he would wander through the great stonework kitchens lost in their hot clouds of steam and through the broad, sunlit stairways with their slit windows; he would wander up to the terraced roof garden, where blossoms grew up across a wooden bower to tangle and spill down into dappled, sweet-smelling shade. 

Up there the city was his to dream of. Streets teemed with life beneath the lurching red-tiled roofs, swarming down the hillside until the city met the sea and exploded with the chaos of the port, which was filled anew each day with bright stamps of colour, the fluttering sails and painted hulls of boats from lands that Jiraiya told him were full to bursting with adventure and that Karin told him were full to bursting with uncivilised barbarian hordes. Beyond the port lay the flat mirror of the ocean, and beyond the ocean lay his sister’s kingdoms, and his sister’s throne, and a home that Naruto had never known. 

For a time this place was Naruto’s alone. The tower stair was long and winding, and Jiraiya was too lazy, the servants too busy, and his sister too short both on patience and on curiosity to waste her time following him up into the skies. But Karin made it her business to know his business; and when at last she demanded to know where he spent his days, he had no choice but to lead her there. 

Very little pleased his sister. The garden in the skies was no exception. The blossoms were heavy with scent that day, hanging ripe and low. When Karin stepped beneath the bower, soft petals brushed gently across her hair, which was red as demon-fire in the sunshine and fell loosely down her back; with a curse she plucked the offending flowers from their stems and tossed them from the wall. “This city is uglier still from the skies,” she told Naruto, when she joined him at the eastern parapet. “When I have my army we shall sail for Westeros, but perhaps we might stop back at Pentos on the way. Perhaps we might burn this whole miserable city to the ground as our farewell. How would you like that, brother?”

Naruto had grown fond of Pentos. The city itself badly reeked of fish, but even that was cut through with the sharp, clean salt of the open sea beyond it, and in any case he enjoyed the stinking chaos of the morning fishmarkets too; but that was not what his sister wanted to hear. “I should like it very well,” he replied, knowing he must tread carefully. “But... if the Pentoshi burn, they cannot tell of your victory. If they live, they could spread fearsome tales of their rightful queen all around the Free Cities.”

“A city turned to ash would spread tales just as well,” Karin said, but from her hand on his back he could tell that she was pleased. “Demon fire is better than they deserve, in any case. It would be wiser to waste no time returning home to take my kingdoms.”

Relief eased the tension from his shoulders. To temper his sister’s instinct for fire and wrath with his own instinct for mercy and compassion was a thankless task, and often fruitless, but it was a task at which Naruto worked his hardest every day; and moments of small victory such as this were to Naruto as much a treasure as their lady mother’s crown was to Karin – or as much a treasure as it had been, at least, before their poverty had coerced its unfortunate sale upon the auction block. 

 

+++

 

In Pentos as in every other place they had ever taken refuge, Karin went out into the city near every day. And in Pentos, as in every place their lifelong fugitive flight had taken them, these visits rarely ended well. She dressed herself in the reds and golds and oranges of a princess of Old Whirlpool, and spoke with the Pentoshi smallfolk in the haughty manner of a princess of Old Whirlpool, and demanded the respect due to a princess of Old Whirlpool; and when she received neither respect nor obedience nor immediate sworn fealty her nine-tails would awaken, in fury and in fire, and she would fight in the streets as savagely as any common bravo. 

But where once his sister would have lied and schemed and shrouded the both of them in ragged disguise to hide that together they were the last of the Uzumaki blood, the luxury of Jiraiya’s manse had made her bold. No longer would she cover her hair when she walked the city streets; she wore it loose, preferring to let the city see the red which had marked the fire of the nine-tails as far back as Mito the Merciful, First of her House, First of her Name. Without a disguise she would be recognised, and once recognised she would be mocked as the Beggar Queen, and once mocked the nine-tails within her would surge in fury from its slumber. In Pentos she was fighting more than she had ever fought, and more and more often the blood of the demon would still be raging in her when she came home to Naruto; more and more often, Naruto would be unable to sleep for his sister unleashing the terrible storms of her temper in the bedchamber adjoining his. 

When Naruto went into the city, he too preferred to go alone. The blood of the demon was as much in him as it was in her, but it did not show in the honey yellow of his hair nor the blue of his eyes; and if the nine-tails slept within him as it slept within Karin, then either its slumber was deeper or its temper was milder, for he was not prone to the fits of rage which so afflicted his sister. Alone in the city, lacking the fiery looks and the fiery moods of the Uzumaki, he passed unrecognised wherever he chose to go – and he chose to go everywhere he could. 

From the frenzy at the port whenever a fresh boat docked a dozen times a day, to the braying commotion of the market stalls that lined the traders’ quarter; from the broader uptown streets where the merchants of Pentos made their homes, to the gleaming bronze steps of the red temple itself, its gilded spires twisting and leaping far into the skies above... The city was his to explore, and he dived into it the way his sister’s hard shove had once caused him to dive from a Braavosi harbour wall; immersed suddenly and absolutely, submerged in the ways of the city, he learned to keep afloat in it the way he had once learned to keep afloat in that busy Braavosi harbour. 

Everywhere Naruto went he took a different name, and everywhere he went he soon found he had people who knew him by that name, and who liked his company as much as he liked theirs: the guards at the Sunset Gate, the washerwomen who clustered at the city’s fountains, the brothel girls in all their silks and lace, the half-feral children of the docks who giggled at the highborn accent he’d started working hard to hide... Even one of the Lord of Light’s temple guards sometimes had a wink for him beneath that shining golden helm. 

Without his sister, he sampled his first real taste of freedom; without his sister, he sampled his first real taste of friendship. 

Both tastes he found he liked. Both tastes he found he wanted more of. 

 

+++

 

A slammed door awoke him, as it often did. His sister’s command followed, as it often did. 

“Up,” she ordered. She flung back the covers from his bed and seated herself beside him, heedless of his nakedness. The last of his sleep left him when she shook him by the shoulder. “Wake, brother. I would speak with you.”

Sunlight filled the room when Naruto opened his eyes, but sunlight came early in the Free Cities; it could have been any hour at all. He struggled to hide a yawn, and struggled too for the memory of what he might have done to anger her. But there was no use to it; many and more things angered her, and little and less did not. “Sister? Is something amiss?”

“You may be the judge of that,” said Karin. She wore her loosest scarlet silks, which Jiraiya had told him privately were not meant to be worn outside the bedchamber; but scarlet was a colour of their House, and Naruto had not understood why Jiraiya had seemed to find his sister’s manner of dress amusing. “Do you know what tales they are telling on the docks, brother? Do you know what they are saying of our House?”

Naruto had no wish to guess – but not for the first time, his sister’s fierce impatience saved him from risking a reply. 

“They say that the last blood of Old Whirlpool has been dressing himself in rags, dirtying his face, and spending all his days in the lowborn gutters of this city. They say that the youngest of the Uzumaki line calls himself a fishwife’s son and plays at knights and bravos with the wharfside scum. They say that my own sweet brother has become the Beggar King in truth as well as name.” Her grip on his shoulder was hard. “Do they lie, brother?”

“They do not lie,” said Naruto, “but—”

She hit him once, across the face. “I try to be kind to you. I try to be gentle with you. But you throw my efforts back at me every time, don’t you? You refuse the nine-tails even a moment’s rest.” 

“I only thought to help us,” said Naruto. His cheek burned him, but he did not dare press his hand against it. He pushed away from her and sat up straighter, his bed’s silk cushions cool against his back. “I only thought to help us win our army, sister—”

“ _My_ army,” said Karin. 

“Your army,” said Naruto. “I thought that if I could get to know the – the common folk, and if I could learn their ways, and a little of what their lives are like... Then I thought that perhaps I could understand them better. And if I could understand them – and if I could know how they lived, and how they _would_ live, if they had the power of choice and change... Then perhaps one day I could be a gentle king to them, and they would love me as a king the same way they had once loved me as a friend.”

“A gentle king is a soft king. And a soft king is a weak king, and a weak king is a dead king. You are a fool,” Karin told him, without a trace of kindness. 

A fool he may have been, but Naruto persisted. “If the common folk learn to love us, they could lend us their strength, sister. They would support us, if they loved us. And if we asked them, they would flock to our cause.” 

“And then what? Shall we sail for home in a fleet of fishing galleys? Will an army of street-sweepers and whores rise up to claim our kingdoms for us?” His sister had Uzumaki eyes, red as the blood of the demon. The look in them was vicious. “Tell me, brother. I would know your plans. Do you imagine Westeros will fall as soon as it catches the stink of this mighty army’s onslaught?”

In truth, he had no plans. It had seemed to Naruto like a strategy so simple that it needed no great thought; he had not dwelled long on the details. “A king is strongest when he has the love of his people,” he said. 

“A queen is strongest when she has the fear and sworn obedience of her people,” said Karin. “And a sister is best pleased when she has the same of her brother. You will not do this again, Naruto. You will not leave Jiraiya’s grounds until I see you wed.”

“But I have friends in the city,” Naruto blurted in dismay. 

“You have me,” said Karin. “No one else. Do you want to wake the nine-tails, brother, or will you hold your tongue?”

It seemed to Naruto that the nine-tails had already been woken. It also seemed that it would not be wise to say so; and so he bowed his head and said nothing, and before long his sister cursed him in displeasure and rose from his bed, and left him to his loneliness. 

 

+++

 

In Pentos they lived on Jiraiya’s coin, and the wedding was to be on Jiraiya’s coin as well. On Jiraiya’s coin, and on Karin’s orders, which she gave as sharply and rudely to Jiraiya himself as she gave them to his servants. In return for his aid they could offer him nothing but their name; and with the desolate ruins of Old Whirlpool left to crumble in a sea that still roiled and seethed with the memory of the Doom, Naruto was often troubled by the thought that the name of House Uzumaki must be worth precious little to anyone these days. 

Ordered by his sister to present himself at Jiraiya’s private solar, Naruto found that although he had dressed himself as Karin commanded, he had not dressed himself quite to the standards of neatness that she considered acceptable; and so he held as still as he could, and let his sister arrange his new-made wedding clothes about him as dispassionately as though she were only readying a slave for the auction block. 

Once the tunic was adjusted to her satisfaction, somewhat less than a quarter of Naruto’s chest was covered by the flimsy orange fabric. It was unlikely he would feel a chill – the fire of the nine-tails burned in his blood, and in any case this hot summer had lasted as long as his life, and seemed like to last as long again – but nevertheless, Naruto felt a measure of discomfort as he looked down upon the translucent, gossamer-fine material draped about him. “Will I have... breeches of some sort, sister? To go beneath it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Karin. “Breeches, and perhaps a cowled robe as well, and then I shall send you off to Westeros alone to join the silent sisters, and none shall ever see what lies beneath your clothes again. Would that suit you better, sweet brother?” 

She did not call him a fool, but she had no need to; the scorn in her tone was more than familiar to Naruto. “I only thought – because I have never seen a wedding before, I only thought that perhaps... Perhaps there were more clothes. But,” Naruto hastened to explain, “ _only_ because I have never seen a wedding—”

“Wedding? This is no _wedding_ ,” said Karin. “This is a trade deal, brother. I am selling your body in exchange for my army. Do you think your husband won’t wish to see what he is buying?”

In the broad seat beneath the window, Jiraiya managed to turn a sudden laugh into a cough, and stifled all of it behind a wrinkled old hand. 

“Does something amuse you?” Karin asked sharply. 

“Oh, not in the least,” replied Jiraiya, though his eyes were sparkling with some private humour. Such was often the case when he spoke with Karin, although the reason for it remained a mystery to Naruto; his sister’s manner was harsh and unforgiving, and it had never seemed to him that there was much about her that might be found amusing. 

Karin drew herself up and fixed him with her hard red stare. “I _will_ have the respect I am due,” she snapped. 

With a smile and a small bow, the old merchant spoke again. “Allow me to correct myself, Your Grace. What I meant to say was: not in the least, Your Grace. _Do_ excuse me, Your Grace.” 

“And in any case,” said Naruto quickly, before his sister’s nine-tails could be roused from its restless sleep, “I like the colour very well, sweet sister. I would have chosen to be wed in orange, had I had the choice. I should like to be laid upon my funeral pyre in orange, if I have the choice. One day I will armour myself for battle in orange, if—”

Karin took him by the shoulders and turned him to face Jiraiya fully. “Stand up straight, brother. And be quiet; it is valuable practice. Your new husband will find it easier to abide you if you keep your silence. Well?” 

This last was to Jiraiya, who stroked his chin as he contemplated the vision in gauzy orange before him. “Doesn’t leave much to the imagination, does it?” he remarked at last. 

“Those barbarians _have_ no imagination,” said Karin, rummaging in the small cloth sack of jewellery that brother and sister shared between them. “So we must do the work for them. Stand up _straight_ , I said; how many times must I tell you? A slouch is unbefitting of a king.”

“You heard Her Grace,” said Jiraiya, and gave Naruto a conspiratorial wink that it was as well for all of them that Karin never saw. 

A rush of secret joy filled his heart. His sister’s back was turned; like the fishwives’ children of the docks had taught him, he crossed his eyes. Jiraiya beamed, and put out his tongue. Naruto crossed his eyes _and_ put out his tongue, and then Jiraiya stuck a finger into either side of his mouth and pulled a face of hideous inventiveness that forced Naruto to double up with what he had to hastily explain away as sudden, mysterious stomach cramps, probably brought on by last-minute wedding nerves; and though Karin looked suspiciously between the two of them, Jiraiya’s expression was as guileless as a summer sky. 

 

+++

 

To Naruto, for whom a day spent pestering the boisterous old merchant as he went about his merry business was always a day of rare and unusual excitements, it seemed that their debt to him was so great it might never be repaid. To Karin, for whom even two minutes spent in Jiraiya’s company was enough to disrupt her nine-tails’ slumber and bring it ragingly awake, it seemed that they owed him no debt at all. She was his rightful queen; his generosity was no more than his duty, and the fulfilment of his duty was no reason for gratitude. 

Though there was some part of this reasoning which sat ill with Naruto, he made no mention of it. The luxury of Jiraiya’s manse was unlike anything he had ever known, but his sister had lived her earliest years in the Red Keep of King’s Landing, and she liked to remind him of it. He was too easily impressed, she often told him; he was naïve, and ignorant of the ways of the world, and more than anything he was fortunate to have Karin beside him to pull his head down out of the clouds when he needed it and bring him back into the dark reality of their exile. 

It had occurred to Naruto before now that, perhaps, the reality of their exile might not be so dark if his sister were a little less inclined to fury and a little more inclined to kindness. It had further occurred to him that it would not be inaccurate to describe the darkness of their exile as being chiefly the fault of Karin herself, whose ill temper and propensity for violence all but guaranteed resentment and retaliation from everyone they met. It had occurred to him too that his sister would not welcome hearing this, and so he took great pains to keep his thoughts between himself and the nine-tails of his monstrous demon dreams. 

Most of all, though, it seemed to Naruto that life would be much simpler for everyone if the nine-tails that slept within his sister could be persuaded to take a few more naps.

 

 


End file.
